4 Most Innovative Employee Referral Bonus Ideas

Kristina Martic | 7/6/2018 | Recruiting

Check out the top 4 most innovative employee referral bonus ideas! How do big brands motivate their employees to refer high-quality candidates? Discover their secrets and use them to improve your own employee referral program by adding the most effective employee referral bonuses!

How to motivate employees to take part in an employee referral program?

According to research, most companies offer cash employee referral bonus:

Almost 70% of companies reward employees for referring a qualified candidate with a cash employee referral bonus between $1,000 and $5,000.

Only 15% of companies reward employees for referring a qualified candidate with a few days off.

However, just because most companies use cash prizes, it doesn’t mean that employee referral bonus in a form of a cash prize is necessarily the best way to motivate your employees to take part in an employee referral program.

As a matter of fact, a recent LinkedIn's research reports that the main reason why employees refer candidates is to help their friends and their company:

35% of employees refer to help their friends.

32% do it to help their company.

26% do it to be seen as a valuable colleague.

Only 6% of employees refer candidates to earn money.

What is the best employee referral bonus idea for your company?

So what is the best way to motivate yourown employees to take part in your employee referral program?

The only way to find out what type of incentives would work best for your own employees is to ask them!

Conduct a survey and ask your employees what would motivate them to take part in your employee referral program.

Conducting a research may take some of your time and effort, but it is well worth it.

For each referral candidate who is hired, the referring employee received a $3,500 Referral Bonus in addition to a $1,500 charitable donation paid by DigitalOcean on the employee’s behalf.

If the employee chooses to contribute an additional portion of the payout to charity, DigitalOcean matched that added donation.

The result? In 2017, 40% of DigitalOcean’s new hires have been referrals.

➡️ Key takeaway:

Help your employees support a charitable organization in a community that has personal meaning to them.

Besides helping your employees feel great because they’re doing a good thing, it will also enhance your Employer Brand.

It will be a powerful statement about what you care about as a company and an important reason that will make many other talented people choose your company and then refer their friends and colleagues to you as well.

3. Employee referral bonus: Public recognition

➡️ Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s story:

Hewlett Packard Enterprise motivates their employees to embrace the employee referral program by publicly recognizing them as great contributors to their company.

This company builds a culture that honors, respects and recognizes employees who refer qualified candidates.

By recognizing their referring employes as “champions” and celebrating their success, this company makes them into positive examples and role models for other employees.

➡️ Key takeaway:

Recognise and thank your employees for referring great candidates!

Even if their candidate doesn’t end up hired in the end, you should still think of a way to thank them for their time and effort.

Of course, these numbers can vary greatly across different industries and specific positions.

So how to calculate the exact value of employee referral cash bonuses that would be optimal to motivate your own employees?

Let’s hear it form an expert!

Dr. John Sullivan, the head of the Human Management Program at San Francisco State University and an expert in employee referral programs, says that the amount of the employee referral cash bonus must be enough to get your employees’ attention, but not so much as to distract them from their real job.